Heirlooms
by Nelras
Summary: A series of largely unrelated oneshots about the generation following several tales.
1. Ashes

_**Chapter 1- Ashes**_

Two months after my eleventh birthday, I asked my brother why our family was so odd. His answer was strange to me then, for I was still more than half child and my mind could not wrap around it. I was fourteen before I knew what he meant. When I was nineteen, I found out the part he had been too kind to tell me.

_"You remember Mother's story?"_

_"The one about the dancing shoe that Father keeps on the mantel in their room?"_

_"Yes, Aine. Do you remember what they called Mother?"_

_"They called her Cinderella. But her real name is Eileen, Kenneth."_

_"Yes, I know. Why did they call her that, do you think?"_

_"She sat near the fire, and cinders flew up and singed her face. But what does this have to do with anything?"_

_"Patience, little sister, or I won't tell you."_

_"Fine, fine. Just get on with it."_

_"Mother sat near the fire, yes. But I'll tell you something the people don't know. Mother IS the fire, Aine."_

_"You're lying, Ken. She's a person, not a fire."_

_"Some people can be more than just people. Mother is one of those sorts of people. She's the fire. She keeps others warm, keeps the nightmares away, but sometimes she burns things. Like the duke that came to court two summers ago."_

_"The duke was in love with her. I'm young but I'm not dimwitted, Ken."_

_"I know that he loved her. THAT is my point."_

_"You mean, it's like fire- you could watch it for hours, because it's beautiful, and it keeps you from becoming chilled, but if you touch it, it burns you. So with Mother, you can watch her, because she's beautiful, and she'll take care of us, but no one can love her?"_

_"Exactly. Well, almost. Father can love her, you see, because he is… he's like the wood thatfire burns."_

_"What are we, then? Father is wood, Mother is fire, butwhat does that make us?"_

_"I suppose it makes me smoke. And you would be the embers."_

_"I don't understand."_

_"Wood fuels the fire. Fire puts off smoke, and sometimes, if it burns strong enough, embers."_

_"That makes sense, then. But why does it make our family strange?"_

_"We were all supposed tojust bepeople. Like our grandparents. But Mother was fire, and I'm not sure how, but Father turned into wood. And after that, I don't think you orI could be anything but smoke and embers. People don't always like fire, Aine. They don't like smoke either, because is stings your eyes and your throat, and it isn't solid. And they think, if they take away the wood, the fire will stop burning, and there won't be anymore smoke."_

_"Why?"  
_

_"Why what?"_

_"Why take away Father?"_

_"Our family is something people aren't comfortable around. We aren't always comfortable around fire, you see, because we know it can burn us."_

_"What about the embers, Kenneth?"_

War broke out the summer Kenneth turned seventeen and I turned thirteen. Two years later, during one of the last major battles, Father led the army. He thought it would be good for morale, and his advisers were either too compassionate to tell him it was a stupid thing to risk or counted on his inexperience pushing him straight into death. If it was the latter, their calculations were right. Mother was never the same. She grew pale and stern, and within fifteen months she was dead. I still remembered my brother's explanation, so when a hysterical maid shook me awake with the news, there was no surprise. After all, her wood was gone.

While Father was fighting and dying and being a fool, Kenneth was studying and observing. After our defeat, he headed the peace-party as one of the five ambassadors. I was so proud of my brother. He negotiated so well that we lost only half the demanded territory, and most of our important prisoners were exchanged fairly. But it took a long time, and when all the ends were tied neatly up, three years had passed. I hardly knew him. Our cousin was acting as Regent, and I myself was seven weeks away from being declared Heir-apparent when he returned. I'm not sure the nation ever forgave him for not attending Mother's funeral, and our cousin, Darren, never forgave him for abdicating.

My aunt would have liked the crown well enough, but my cousin hated governing, and crowns aren't passed to aunts if there's a male adult to pass them to until the royal children are old enough, and most of the time crowns aren't passed to daughters either. I was Heir-apparent for formality's sake only, and because embers weren't so disconcerting as smoke. And smoke Kenneth was. He drifted on the wind from place to place, first as ambassador, then as my cousin's eyes and ears to repay him for taking the throne. It was being those eyes and ears that got him killed. A spy is not well looked upon, no matter where he goes.

So my cousin is here in the palace, bitter and angry and sad. My aunt is using her position in court to the furthest extent it can be used, and I am in Kenneth's old room, using flint to start a fire in the old hearth because it's winter now, and I'm tired at looking at the ashes that I refused to let the maids clean out. Besides, I miss the smell of smoke, and if I don't burn Mother's glass slipper my aunt will smash it. It sat on the mantel until late this morning. She glared at it every time she came into the royal suite to have tea with her son and niece.

Darren is not black hearted. He regards me with a rather infuriating mix of pity and respect, and for this reason I have not been married off or poisoned on his mother's orders. It is also why I sit through the ordeal of tea with him and my conniving aunt once a week.

The fire is flaring now. The heat is a nice contrast to the icy flagstones beneath my toes. I'm watching the slipper melt, standing so close to the flames that I can taste the smoke before it swirls up the chimney.

The log is blackened, and the fire is dying out. The glass shoe is half-melted. My dress and hair smell like smoke, and I'm too warm now, even my feet. The hearth is grimy with soot, and the cooling ash is a pasty grey color that matches the shadows outside my window. _"What about the embers, Kenneth?"_ I think I know what happens to the embers, if they don't disappear altogether when the log collapses and the fire burns out and the smoke clears.


	2. Alive

_**Chapter 2- Alive**_

Queen Roslyn is the one they call Sleeping Beauty, and my mother. Her godmothers cursed her, the fools. She didn't want to be effortlessly perfect. She just wanted to live, and she couldn't, because as far as the natural world was concerned, she already had. When she was seven, she had woven ten tapestries of a quality no weaver or seamstress could hope to match. At eleven, she had cooked a feast in under two hours, she out danced the most proficient ambassador's wife, she could speak eight languages, she had won every single debate she ever deigned to enter against my grandfather's advisers, and helped her country avoid a war. By the time she was sixteen, she had done nearly everything expected of a royal prodigy twice over and the unexpected things as well. She never failed. She'd never been unkind either, which may have been how she averted that war.

Those idiot fairies gave her beauty, cleverness, grace, a good disposition, and everything else they thought a princess ought to have. They took away her normalcy, boxed in her personality, and worse, made her completely aware of just how chained she really was. Ironic that Desde had meant to have revenge by the curse, when Mother saw it as the only blessing her birth had given her. Imagine her disappointment when she was woken by a strange prince, her country long since gone and her home crumbling and overgrown with thickets of thorns and half-bloomed roses!

I believe the one untruth in her legend at present is the rumor that true love's kiss would break the curse. One of those dim-witted godmothers was able to alter the spell enough that the "poor dear" would only sleep for a century, true enough, but there was never any kiss mentioned in the counter-spell. Love had nothing to do with my parents' marriage. My father, at twenty-seven, had been pressured from all sides to marry, and here was this lady he had inadvertently rescued. She was graceful, poised, beautiful. She was royal. The two were friends, and Father liked none of the simpering court adornments that prestige-loving families presented to him. It was a sensible course of action, and an agreeable one. But they have never loved each other, and never will. How could they? She had grown up in a since-forgotten era, burdened with gifts and good intentions that had made her world-weary. His heart was light, his mind unfettered by magic. She was moving inexorably towards death, he had always been vigorously alive.

They're both worn thin, now. In another year, I will take the throne. Father has finally tired, and Mother is happy to relinquish her title to the empty throne next to the one I will soon occupy. It's meant, I suppose, for the wife I'm expectedto find at some point in the distant future (most likely, I will never find one, much to the councilors dismay). I'm afraid I'm rather a disappointment after my enchanted mother and heroic father. I inherited neither of their good natures, none of Mother's kindness, or Father's easy charm. I have her aptitude for learning, his practicality. She gave me the cynical humor she was never allowed to have, he, the love of the land he has such deeps roots in. But I do not always listen attentively to the aging lords' boasting, or respond appropriately to foreign diplomats' veiled threats. (I have a predisposition towards dealing with things in a distinctly blunt manner. At some point this may result in a war, in which case I will have an excuse to send off a few of those aging regiment leaders with a fanfare. I'm sure they'll like it rather more than dying drunken and insensate on a tavern floor.) I have no patience for the court games or intrigues that I am expected to maneuver through. I do not share my father's everlasting joviality, and if the outlook is bleak, I will not rally the people through sheer optimism or inspire the doddering generals with my hope. If my taste-tester survives his first month of service, I will very much impressed. I believe I may have been indirectly responsible for the death of Father's two years back, actually. (Something that I could have found amusing, had it not been for the repercussions that it wrought.)

I bear no un-sought blessings, I have never encountered a sleepily disoriented maiden in my roamings amongst the eroded stones of the past. Nor, I think, will I ever find a bad-tempered Desde this side of the veil. The power it took to sustain such a long spell will have drained her. Does she know now, I wonder, that her pride has cost her more than it should have? Mayhap the fairy and I are more alike than would be comfortable to suppose. Nasty tempers, pride enough for ten men, and no compromises in our ways of thinking. Albeit, I have no magic about me, and she is rather too old and too female- if still living- to be mistaken for Roslyn's only child. I am content, for now, in my parents' shadows. Father will become an honorable, dutiful, durable symbol. I will be treacherously human. She will be legend someday, no doubt. I will be alive. In that, I believe, I will live up to my father, and surpass my mother.


	3. Pretty

**_Chapter 3- Pretty_**

I wonder why they named Ma Beauty. She's not that pretty really. She's pale, and her lips are too thin. She's got lots of freckles and turns redder 'n me if she's outside for a long time. Her sisters are prettier. My Pa even says so. Grandpapa says it, too. Pa doesn't love Ma's sisters, though, so I suppose she's got to be prettier somehow. I'm not really sure how.

They say Ma's sisters are my ants, but they don't look much like ants, and I don't own them, so I don't see how they are. Blanche is too fat to be an ant. She's still pretty, but she's fat. Garnema keeps telling me to call her 'Anne Tea.' But I don't, and I never will. Blanche ignores me, so mostly I don't call her anything.

My Grandpapa's sick, you know. Well, I don't suppose you do, you're just a flower after all. I don't have any lessons right now, and Merle ran off to play with the new kittens. I don't like this litter, so I stayed here in the gardens. This litter isn't as pretty as the last, and all of them scratch and bite. Merle says he likes them better than the last kittens we had, but he's just a boy, so I don't think he'd know what he was talking about anyway. He said something about them having more personality, but that's silly. Animals don't have personalities. Ma told me so. Pa says that they do, but Pa is a boy too so he doesn't know. Well, Pa is actually a man, but I'm not sure what the difference is, quite yet. Ma says I'll figure out eventually. Grown-ups. They never tell you anything.

You sure are a pretty rose. You're all red and pretty and good-smelling. Do you mind if I pick you? Grandpapa said he wanted to see some roses again. He hasn't been outside for _centuries_. Ma says _centuries_ is a really long, long time, and that Pa has been around for lots of them. Longer than even than Grandpapa, but I'm not sure how that works. Grandpapa is Ma's Pa, so he'd have to be older, right? Anyway, he hasn't been in the gardens for a long time, and he really likes roses. He said one time that when Pa met him, Pa got mad because he picked the roses. But I've never seen Pa mad about _anything_ so I don't think it happened. He also said Pa was an animal back then, and that's complete _refuse. Refuse_ is something that stinks like a chamber pot. Merle told me so. Merle might be a boy, but he knows about words and such. Grandpapa's story stinks like the chamber pot. Pa can't have been an animal, because he's a man now. But Grandpapa had already gotten sick when he told me the story, so that's okay. I wish he wasn't sick. He got all skinny, and his hair keeps falling out. Well, it was already falling out, but now it's _really _falling out.

Ouch! You've got sharp thorns! You didn't have to stab me, you know. I'll put you into water soon. Ma says I've got to so you don't die. There's red stuff coming out of my thumb now. It's about the color you are. It's called blood, right? Oops! I spilled the water. You wait a second and I'll take you to meet Grandpapa. He's nice. He talks to me like I'm a grown-up. Only Merle does that, besides Grandpapa. Are you a grown-up flower? You look like the grown-up kind. You're not a little bud anymore, so I suppose you are. I wonder if Merle is back from looking at the kittens. I want to see him after I take you to Grandpapa.

Just a second. I've got to set you down to open the door. There. Now you can meet Grandpapa. He spends a lot of time in bed now. Hopefully he'll be better soon. Is it okay for you to be on the night-table? I hope so.

"Grandpapa, I brought a flower, just like you asked. See? Grandpapa? Grandpapa, you're really cold. I think you need more blankets." I'll be back in a second, rose. Don't wilt, or Grandpapa will be disappointed.

Too bad Pa is helping the servants fix the castle doors. They say the doors haven't been fixed for fifty years. That's a really long time to not be fixed, don't you think? But Pa is the only one who can reach the blankets on the shelf. I could get Merle to boost me. Then I could reach. He's fourteen. That's almost six years older 'n me. But he still plays with me, so maybe that's the difference between a man and a boy. His big brother quit playing with me when he was almost as big as Merle is now. He's the maid's youngest son. There's three of them. Ayer's the middle one. He's nice, but he treats me like the rest of the grown-ups do. I never met the oldest one. Merle says his name is Chip, and that he wanted to go see the places outside of the castle grounds. Chip's an awfully funny name, isn't it? Merle says they call him that because he used to drop all the tea cups, and if they didn't break, they'd chip. He also says Chip and his ma used to be invisible, but he's a boy. You can't believe everything boys say.

There's Merle! Good. He'll help me get a blanket. "Merle! I need help. Grandpapa's really cold. He needs more blankets." Merle is frowning at me. "Come on, Merle! I don't want Grandpapa to get sicker!"

Now he's laughing at me. No fair. He shouldn't laugh at me. Stupid boy. "I'm coming. Did you give him your rose?"

"It wasn't my rose, silly. It was just in the garden."

"Ah. Well, let's get him that blanket." We're back. I had to run to keep up with Merle. That's the only problem with him. He walks too fast, and his legs are really long.

"Alette, I- I don't think your grandfather needs anymore blankets."

Silly, of course he needs blankets, otherwise he wouldn't be cold. "Yes, he does!" Why is Merle pulling me? Sorry flower. I'll show you to Grandpapa later. I'm already halfway down the hall. Merle can pull as fast as he can walk. He's taking me to Ma. You know what, Ma's lips are the same color as you and my blood. That's funny. I never noticed before. She says Grandpapa isn't coming back, but that's not true. He said he wanted to see you. Don't worry flower, he'll come back. He has to meet you. He said he would. Merle is making me go with him to see the kittens again. He says we can go back to show you to Grandpapa some other time.

"When? When will we show Grandpapa the flower?" I want to know. Merle is shaking his head.

"A long time from now. Here, Alette. This kitten is a calico. Pretty, isn't she?" He's trying to distract me. He should know better. Pa says I never let anything drop. That means I don't get distracted easy.

"Will we show Grandpapa the rose in _centuries_? Ma says that's a long time." Merle is smiling at me now, but his eyes are all funny and shiny.

"Yeah, we'll show him then."

"Alright. Can we show him the calico, too? I decided I like this one. I still like the other litter best, though."

Merle is laughing at me again, but there's water running down his cheeks. I thought that only happens when someone is sad. But if he's laughing, he has to be happy, right? I'm confused. If he's sad, I should hug him. Ma says that's the best thing to do to cheer someone up.

"Are you happy or sad, Merle? You're not supposed to cry when you laugh, silly." Ah! He's hugging me really tight now. I don't mind so much, but does he have to be so strong when he hugs? He's whispering, but I can't hear what he's saying.

"… he had his happy ending. He was old. It's not so bad." Oh. Merle is talking to himself again. I don't mind, though. He stopped crying. I think he didn't want Grandpapa to go away for so long. Grandpapa adopted him and his brothers when their ma died. Merle and Ayer even call him "Grandfather," some times. But only sometimes. I think they should have called him Pa, but they didn't. Boys. They're almost as confusing as grown-ups.

Merle is taking me back to the castle now. He's letting me ride on his shoulder. He stopped letting me do that a year ago. He said I was getting too fat to carry like that. I'm not fat though. Ma says I'm too skinny for my age. She also says I'm too tall. But he's letting me ride now, so maybe he remembered that I'm not fat. I feel tall. The castle looks really pretty right now. Like a picture from a storybook. You can't tell its stone is cracked from here. Do you know how pretty the castle is? They should have called it Beauty instead of Ma. Don't you think so? I guess not. You're only a flower after all, you can't see. Still, it's really pretty.


	4. Understood

**_Chapter 4- Understood_**

My adoptive uncles used to frighten me. It's only natural. They're hideous. They're family, but that doesn't change the fact that they're ungainly, grotesque. My stepmother, Eirwen, brought Ilar and the other six to court when I was nine. I ran out of the library screeching, terrified that this woman I had thought of as an aunt was an enchantress and had brought demons to my father's house. I was a very superstitious little brat. It took Berwyn the better portion of an afternoon to convince me that the new court fools were human. That was the easy part. It took a year for him to cajole and threaten me into getting to know the men who had raised Eirwen when she was thrust from her childhood home. In the end, it was the realization that they had done for Eirwen what Berwyn did for me that spurred me to acceptance.

Berwyn has been whatever I needed him to be most at any given time. He played the part of an adult when plague took my first mother, though he was scarcely three years older than me. He was my brother and best friend when my father married Eirwen and had less and less time for his first wife's only son. When, at age thirteen, I decided that the very stars were obligated to obey my every whim, he once more forced himself from the role of playmate to mentor. He did not do it very well- our ages were at the point where three years was hardly the substantial gulf it had been- but he was determined, by any means necessary, to ensure that I grew up without the pretensions that I seemed so inclined towards. He insulted, he pushed, he taught, he scorned, and in the process of attempting to do what my father had never done- force me to grow up- he matured himself.

I think it was Ilar, the half deaf, pox-scarred rascal that he was, who first realized how close Berwyn and I were. I know it was he who convinced Eirwen to allow us to continue archery lessons together long after the sessions ceased to benefit either of us. It became the only time Berwyn and I could spend together afterthe summer after his nineteenth birthday. His parents died that year during a crossing from Nyr to our homeland. As a result, he was running his manor from afar while finishing his training to become a knight. Ilar must have forced Berwyn to show up to those afternoons spent in the archery field as well, because Berwyn didn't have the time or desire to do anything more than what wasrequired of him. But Ilar was a surrogate father to him, and if Ilar expected something of Berwyn, Berwyn would try his damnedest to meet those expectations. Clever bastard. Ilar knew exactly what the continued companionship would become to both Berwyn and I.

Eirwen must have caught on sooner than I did, because she began shortly thereafter to do everything in her power to have my half-brother declared next in line to the throne. I was hurt, and more than a bit puzzled by the turn of events. She and I had always gotten along, occasionally seeing more eye-to-eye than myself and my father. She had no reason to take the crown away from me- her son, at twelve and indolent, hardly wanted it. But she knew that as monarch, I would be duty-bound to produce children, something that I would never do, if things continued the way they were going. Eirwen had long since discovered that I had an obstinate streak that neither Berwyn nor old Ilar could soften, and acknowledged, before I was even aware of what I felt, that I would never forsake my bond with Berwyn to marry to suit the kingdom.

When myfather left to oversee the country's census, Eirwen promptly used her temporary stand-in as ruler to have me declared unfit to rule. I'm not sure what grounds she used, because she never sought to expose the slowly progressing- for lack of a better term- courtship between Berwyn and I. Whatever reason she gave, it must have been convincing, because within a fortnight her son was Heir-apparent. My father was furious when the he found out, but his overwhelming habit of saving-face kept him from doing anything more public than sending her a scathing letter of rebuke. It took him a long time to forgive her, but for all his pride, he loved her too well.

My half-brother has the crown now, much to the kingdom's dismay. I think, though, with time he will be a better king than he is given credit for now. He is not a tyrant, he is not overly corrupt, and he is not a fool. He simply needs motivation. My father is dead.I make my residence with Berwyn, and if there are whispers every so often, his tenants are loyal enough to quell them for us. Ilar visits us now and then, with his wife Wynne. They're quite a pair, those two. She is as old as he, as temperamental, and has hearing more than sharp enough to make up for his lack of it. She calls him an old boar, and worships the ground he walks on, though she'll never admit it. It was the scandal of a decade, when they married. They're too old to be in love, she's rich, he's poor, and he's uglier than ever. They're the happiest old coots alive. The other six are still at court, and we get the rare letter from them maybe once a year. Eirwen lives with us. That was another scandal- the dowager living in some backwater estate with no one but an eccentric pair of young nobles. We're an odd family, Ilar, Eirwen, Wynne, Berwyn and I. We have spectacular fights some days, Ilar and I, and Eirwen and Berwyn squabble more than any two people have a right to.Wynne is the peace keeper, really.

I've always wondered why Eirwen never tried to keep me from seeing what Berwyn had become to me. Certainly she knew her son would make a mediocre king -at least setting out-, and that for as long as I was ignorant of what I felt, I would become exactly what the land wanted, but she did her damnedest to ensure that I wouldn't spend the rest of my days married to some doting trinket and hating myself for not seeing things sooner. It couldn't have been her maternal instinct- she didn't have one- that made her put my happiness in front of the kingdom's. It may have stemmed from a desire to prove that she wasn't what her own mother had been. I'll never know, and I don't intend to ask. I'm happy enough with this makeshift, patched, sharp-edged family, and grateful to her, for understanding.


	5. Dancer

**_Chapter 5- Dancer_**

The land in Nyr is rocky, cold, unforgiving. Like my people. Nyrans are invariably stolid, short spoken, grudging. I love them for it. I love their storm-cloud eyes, their harsh speech, their unchanging indifference to all but the strongest of forces. I love my home. The freezing sea, the shivering pines, the distant sky, the cloud-misted peaks, all of it. But my people do not fly, they wear down under the never-ceasing northern wind. My land does not dance through its seasons, it simply rebuffs spring at the earliest warning and strides through summer in a cool, unmoved manner. Sunlight is pale and weak here, and the warmest days find our fires well tended.

Mirrin cared for my people. She was fond of my home. But she did not love Nyr. She had been raised in a place of rolling plains and volatile springs and warm summers. She loved her husband. She loved me, her daughter, her only child. She did not love Nyr. She could not pull her adopted country into the midsummer dances, and she could not love it.

Mirrin could fly though. The west wind taught her how to soar during her long search for Father. I was two when she left to look for him. Her own homeland had taken him prisoner. They thought that Nyr's queen, being native to them, would pay the demanded ransom and cede the demanded territory. Instead she left four trusted councilors to look after her new people, a nursemaid to look after her young heir, and set off to rescue him. She returned with her husband nearly four years later, resumed ruling her husband's kingdom, and did not try to bring her surrogate subjects into the midsummer dances again. But every once in a while she would come to my room, and she would dance with me. Circle dances, country dances, the occasional formal dances. We would whirl and laugh and I would forget that I was usually silent with this lady who had left me in a nursery for three years and eight months with naught but a sharp tongued serving girl while she sought a captive spouse. Very, very rarely, Mirrin would gather me up in her arms, sprint outdoors, and take me up over the treetops, over the stony cottages, above the first swell of mist over the shoreline. At first, I was frightened and it seemed unnaturally cold and I wished to walk with other Nyrans on the ground. Gradually, I became less and less mindful of the all consuming chill that was more powerful above than below, and more and more conscious of the wind shrieking through my skin to my bones, of the biting thrill that came with running through the air.

The first and only summer afternoon Mirrin flew with me, she took me higher than she'd ever done before. The sky was warmer than I remembered from the previous flight, and the farther from land we went, the more fiery the sun seemed. I was eight, and mesmerized by this new version of light. It was unlike the pale beams I was accustomed to, unlike the red fire that crackled briskly in the hearths, unlike anything native to Nyr. Her hair was blowing into my face, soft and bright and scented with things as temporary and delicate as the strange flowers she had once tried to cultivate in an out-of-the-way courtyard. It had never seemed so rich a brown as it did then, streaming in the wind and warm with this new sun. And then we were going down again, plummeting in a falcon's dive, and the light was as thin and watery as ever, and Mirrin's hair was a dull mud color.

The next flight was during a thunderstorm. The rain had lashed like a whip, stinging and slightly salty with sea brine. Lightning warred with the waves Mirrin and I skimmed over, and I had laughed, as I did when we danced, bright and jangling. It was the last flight.

The half-known, half-loved woman who was not quite real to Nyr, who had never exactly loved my people, never exactly been mother to me was not made for unyielding, rocky places. She was not made for weathering the wind and cold and staying put near fires through long winters. Mirrin simply died, quietly and unexpectedly, a month after that glorious plunge through the storm. I wasn't sure what to make of it at the time. Nor, I think, was Father. But he kept on, political game after political game, trade negotiation after treaty, for another nineteen years.

It was Father who taught me how to weather the wind after learning how to race upon it, how to move in the deadly efficient way of my people after dancing for so long I could scarcely walk without picking up my heels. And my love of my people did what Mirrin's love of my father could not do, and forced me to learn these things. So I have stoically waited out winters and ambassadors, walked heavy-booted through the snow with my husband and my people to help with the wood gathering, watched neutral as other nations fought, for the past decade.

But every evening I shut my chamber door, pull off my cloak and my fur-lined boots, sing the half-forgotten midsummer song about east of the sun and west of the moon, and dance until I can't stand. Mostly simple country dances that don't require much footwork, occasionally the circle dances with my bewildered, amused spouse. I don't remember the waltzes. I can not fly anymore, for I am older now, and my frame, though trim, is weighted with muscle and sinew and the wind can not lift such an unwieldy thing. Perchance it still lifts my son, as slim as he is, for I took him flying as a child. It does not carry my daughter, though she too I ascended with. She has grown stockier than myself with ice and hunting and hard labor. She is like her people, like my people, worn and hard and enduring. My land is still frigid and my shivering pines still frost-coated.

And though I love my people, they have never flown. Though I love my land, it will never dance.


	6. Bliss

_**Chapter Six- Bliss**_

His father tells him stories; short stories, just ten minutes, sometimes even shorter. When the afternoon is a gold-gilded lazy and when the evening is blue to match the shadows in the corner of their little hearth, he will sit enraptured, wrapped in his father's words. The tales are always about the same thing: a mermaid with cinnamon skin and seaweed hair. Sometimes the mermaid wrestles sharks. Others, she catches fish with her bare hands or seeks the seven seas over for pearls to thread onto seal sinew to give to her grandmother. And the boy sits, surrounded by the stink of gutted fish and ocean spray and water-stained leather, seeing worlds below the waves.

His mother drinks whiskey when she can, and makes the nets his father uses to put food and money into their little home. She doesn't tell him stories, but she hums, flat and tuneless and strangely pretty, coming from her burnt lips bracketed with laugh lines and callused skin, brown with sun, salt, life. The boy likes it when his mother hums. The melodies sound like the songs the sailors talk about when they weigh anchor -as they do occasionally- siren songs that could lure a ship to Davy Jones's locker. His mother's favorite food is lobster.

The boy plays, laughs, steals fruit from the market place in the summer. Fall and winter fly past in a blur of sore fingers, scalded lips, scraped knees, frostbitten toes. Spring cycles in with moody warm mornings and too much rain. The boy listens to his father's stories and learns to whittle. He whittles lumpy misshapen whales, finless dolphins, deformed mermaids. The mermaids the boy always stains brown as best he can- deep, red-brown like cinnamon. The boy hears his mother's flat droning hum and makes up words to the songs- words about pearls and seashells and hidden places at the very deepest parts of the sea.

His father tells him stories; longer stories now, for the older man's hands are arthritic and he can no longer spend days casting out nets. The boy casts the nets now. When he comes back in, his mother's breath is nearly enough to intoxicate but her eyes are sharp and loving and her hands are still swift as she patches yet another pair of trousers. His father starts the fables mumbling, voice increasing with each sentence until he's nearly shouting, and the aging tones scratchy and no longer soothing. And the boy wonders- wonders even as he loses himself in that other reality his father creates for him- if his father hasn't begun to slip, because every now and again there's a fisherman mentioned, one with a seashell bracelet the mermaid gave to him, who gives the mermaid crab, crab bait, and scorched lobster to eat. The fisherman was never in the stories when the boy was younger.

His mother doesn't drink whiskey much anymore- she mostly stays just outside the doorway, piecing together nets with painstaking care and watching for the boy's return. Her skin is even browner than before, and her once dark hair is woven with sun-bleached silver. She still doesn't tell him stories, and her humming is still flat and dank and stale and oddly beautiful. The songs have changed over the years- they picked up a life of their own, and the melodies sometimes eddy into actual words- words that the boy thought of years ago- the siren song is still there, more alluring than ever before. His mother can't eat lobster any more- her teeth have begun to rot.

The boy mourns, screams, breaks the one glass window in their shanty that summer. Fall and winter creep slowly by in a monotony of shaking shoulders, hacking coughs, too-warm foreheads. Spring rolls in like a hurricane, balmy and wrong and unwanted. The boy can't hear anything over the silence of his father's death, and he forgets to love the feel of sand under his rough, perpetually bare feet. He forgets this as his mother begins babbling to fill the gaps, as his mother stops humming and starts telling him stories of a fisherman who could make stew fit for kings from corn husks, potatoes, and half-rotted fish. The boy has gotten better at whittling, and soon he is making crude furniture out of driftwood while he ignores his mother and forgets the feel of sand under his feet.

His father tells him stories in his dreams. Stories without words, without thought, without anything but the tidal waves for narration. His mother hums to the boy in her last weeks of life, the tunes no longer siren but grating. The boy likes this better than her ramblings about the fisherman and sometimes the sharp-toothed mermaid, who caught fish with her bare hands. Then his mother is gone. The boy isn't sure whether to be relieved or angry that he is completely alone- he never like half-finished things, but he doesn't like change either. Eventually the turmoil fades, leaving a nostalgia that threads in and out and around his waking moments. Soon that disperses as well. The boy begins carpentering in earnest, slowly relearning the feel of sand under his feet and the sensation of a boat under him on the days when he has no work. His hut is filled with carvings of mermaids and dolphins and whales and seal-sinew-pearl necklaces. None of them are stained, except for the mermaids. Once, he carves out a fisherman. He doesn't stain it, but he rubs fish oil into it until the whittling stinks of it. He never finds the half-crumbled seashell bracelet hidden under the moldering mattress, because one stormy evening the shanty burns to the ground, and he rebuilds closer to the beach. It doesn't matter. The boy makes himself a bracelet of his own out of fish scales and netting one bored morning, and it never comes off his wrist after he puts it on.


	7. Know

_**Chapter Seven- Know**_

You're too young for this, you think, watching suitor after suitor enter, sweating as if you're one of your father's horses run too fast too far. But you mother doesn't know this—she knows that your voice is steady, your eyes are cool, your posture impeccable. So you stand. Because when you were tutored, you didn't learn that to laugh was to fly, you learned to keep your voice steady, your eyes cool, your posture impeccable. When you were taught to dance you were not warned that dancing under another's magic is not dancing at all, you were admonished to waltz properly directed by duty, tradition, scrutiny. You never questioned it until now. Mother follows the waltzes flawlessly, easily. So when she tells you that you are a tool, you think you are. Except… you misstep, badly, and your father hurls you from the ballroom. You accept it, just as your mother accepts it.

You're too weak for this, you think, heaving firewood into the hut, straining as if you're one of the officer's hapless regulars. But the soldier doesn't notice—he notices only that you keep his hearth stocked, sweep his floor, warm his bed. So you carry. Because time hasn't taught you how to run, time has taught you to stay, bend, break with pressure if need be. Duchess, whore, tool. Time has taught you bitterness as well. So when you grunt and bow under the tinder, you add a curse for good measure, you don't drop the wood and turn away. You endure, just as time endures.

You're too vulgar for this, you think, shattering a tray against the floor, shaking like the palsied beggar you glimpsed on the street once. But the guests don't care—they care only that you clean it up noiselessly and get out. So you kneel. Because you can hear the music that will stop if you cause a scene, you pick up the broken crockery and pray the music continues. You wish you knew how to run the way you used to waltz. But you don't, and a man is coming towards you. So when he addresses you with kind words and warm eyes, you freeze under his scrutiny. And nothing you know has frozen quite like that.

You're too unlucky for this, you think, striding towards your groom, feet clumsy as if you're some ungainly giant from an old tale. But your husband is smiling and he doesn't know that you're scared—he only knows that your smile is calm and your eyes are poised. So you lift your head. Because you don't know that you look like a human, you only know that you feel like a ghost. You want love. You don't remember what it is, though your spouse's laughter upon discovering that you rejected all the dancing slippers he bought trying to match your gown in favor of bare feet begins to remind you. So when your husband closes his eyes merrily to savor the sound of your mismatched vows, you don't mimic his example. You watch, eyes poised, just as you had once upon a time ago.

You're too old for this, you think, chasing four children around the garden, panting like one of your late husband's dogs. But your grandchildren don't know that—they know only that you're there to play with them, feed them, love them. So you do. Because when you were a girl you didn't know that your grandfather's hands were too arthritic to skim the harpsichord keys for as long as you took falling asleep, you knew only that he was there to play with you, feed you, love you. So when your grandchildren beg to play war, you don't shake your head and tell them what war really means or mention that climbing half way up the tree makes your knees stiff and sore. You love, just as your grandfather loved, because you want them to _know_.

Debutante, whore, servant, wise-woman, lover, but not a tool. You fit in this, you _know_, like yourself and no one else.


	8. Kin

_**Chapter Eight- Kin**_

The villagers are fond of Hansel. He is fat, lazy, vulgar. He stays out too late, they whisper, and his wife is grateful for it. The miller's son looks more like Hansel than the miller, with all that curly hair on his head and blond to boot. Miller Johann's family has never turned out such hair before, poor man. Yes, Kelby is Hansel's bastard, no mistaking that, the elders nod. Kelby's a wonder of a thing, slim and bright, a dreamer and a good hunter. It's no curiosity Johann still claims him, despite those looks. Anyone with a heart would. Hansel makes shoes for a living, yet he wears velvet doublets! Well, his shoes are _very_ high quality. You can't call him lazy about shoes. But velvet! on a shoemaker. Unseemly, the nobles murmur, uppity. At least his wife is properly humble. _She_ doesn't wear velvet. Hansel's wife is a pretty thing, no mistaking that, the men say. The women sniff when this is noticed, but they don't deny it. Besides, Winola is a good woman, a good respectable mother. Four children and Hansel, bless her! the grandmothers say. The younger women have to agree. He's charming, in his own way, but really he's just a boy too big for his britches, they sigh, and for once, they're right. But it'll be easier for Winola when Carl's grown. There's a fine lad- strapping, handsome, sturdy, hard-working. Not like his father with women, either. More the pity, the girls giggle, but the fathers and brothers of town are happy to know this, even Carl's Uncle Anton. Gretel's daughters inherited their mother's beauty, and if Carl were like his father he wouldn't mind tumbling his oldest cousin. Anton knows it too, they twitter, but he's such a proper man he'd never voice it. Hansel's younger sons, Roth and Ulric, are too young to be worrisome yet. Oh, such well-mannered, lively little boys! the villagers remark. And Klara is such a sensible slip of a girl, always helpful. She and her mother'll make certain her two small brothers grow up well. Hansel's got a fine brood, no mistaking that, and he's charming in his own way.

The villagers are fond of Hansel's sister Gretel, as well. She is a bit superstitious- they've all heard her talk- but kindly. She looks after old Hans now. You'd never know she's younger than that brother of hers, the grandfathers shake their heads, she always was more responsible than him, even as a child. Why, so generous, too, the women add, and she adores Anton. Really, it was such a very odd match, when those two married. His looks don't measure next to hers, not a whit. He's ten years older, too, was an old friend of her father's before he knew her. That's right! He was her step-mother's much younger brother, one shopkeeper remembers. Oh, everyone knows about Han's second wife, mistreated Hansel and Gretel something awful and then abandoned the children in the woods the night after her brother came to visit from the university. He found Hansel and Gretel all on his own, poor young man was so ashamed when he heard what his sister had done, they say. Such a romantic story for her and Anton, though, the women smile. Odd, but really such a romance, him knowing exactly where to look every time Gretel disappeared when she was younger, cheering her father up after _that woman_ left, listening to all those silly worries about sweet-bread forest houses, keeping Hansel from drowning himself in a tankard. Strange, those fears about hags, Gretel's usually very practical, very intelligent. She'd known exactly what to do when that drought came, they nod. Pity about her eldest, a bit touched, Etta is, but then, waking up blind after a stroll in the woods is a good deal of trauma for one so young. Poor Gretel was so angry that month, storming around the bakery like a devil-woman, they remark sadly. Etta's such a beauty, too. Besides, Alfons and Dietrich are just fine, though Dietrich won't go near the woods anymore. Canny lads, those two. They've their mother's mind and looks, no mistaking that. Mariel is more like her father in looks, more the pity, and she has the same humor, but she's a good girl, good friends with her cousin Klara, never quarrels. Gets into mischief some, with Klara's help though, bless them! Gretel's got a strange, pretty gaggle, no mistaking that, and she's mighty clever after a fashion.


	9. Delicacy

_**Chapter Nine- Delicacy**_

Your body: bony, bare, putrid and waxy with the oily rain that has been sluicing down for the past fortnight, is found in the corner of a back alley late Sunday evening. You are buried in a pauper's grave, unwept.

For a long, impossibly still moment, you stare. It is the first birthday present you've received in over five years. Then you wolf down the sweetmeat, nearly gagging in your haste. It does not taste as good as you imagined it would.

You can hear the sound of breaking glass from your perch on the roof; you remember the last dull _clink_ of cracked champagne glasses, _"Happy birthday, Princess,"_ your mother laughing at the party the other whores have thrown for her.

The sun peeps over the horizon, sleepy and glaring, disgruntled at the early hour. Bright-eyed, you glare back until the rays blind you, your innocence a stark contrast to the filth of your surroundings. Your mother is out with what she calls "a John," and you have the bed to yourself for now.

"You bruise so easily, Princess," Sal laughs. You wonder why the older woman thinks it's so funny. The dark spots on your mother's unclad hips look stark, scary, livid and predictable with regular spaces between the five ovals.

"We all fall down, we all fall down…" happily unaware that your voice is too high and flat to provide any enjoyment for the passerby, you hum yourself south three familiar blocks and across the street. "ring around the rosy, pockets full of posy… "

You toddle after your mother. Ragged, skinny, starved for everything except affection. You never quite manage to miss all the rest.

Panting, you mother reaches out her arms. You are red, noisy, smelly and slick with the fluids of your mother's efforts. You wail, preferring the warm obscurity of her womb to the clear Friday afternoon air. Her arms are a suitable substitute, it turns out.


	10. Unwise

**_Chapter Ten- Unwise_**

**Move over, halfwit!**

You shouldn't call yourself names.

**Shut up. At least I don't write like a girl.**

_Sasha doesn't write like me! You can actually read his stuff._

This is stupid. If we're going to write notes at least make it interesting. Otherwise we might as well pay attention.

**Stop trying to be responsible. We all know you hate these things as much as we do.**

_At least he's trying._

**Why do you always take his side?**

_He's a better brother than you._

Ha!

_Don't let it get to you. You're still a halfwit._

I'll have your head when I'm king, Nanon.

_No, you won't. You're too much of a goody-goody for revenge._

Try me.

**Why should she? She's right. Besides, you're never going to be king. You're going to be a wealthy gentleman. And that's only if I don't kill you for the inheritance before then.**

Whelp. You'll do no such thing.

**Ooh! Impersonating Father now, how scary!**

_Stupid boys. You kill each other and I can't stay here. They'll marry me off to the highest bidder. It'll be like Mother's first husband; you'll have to come rescue me, but you'll be dead._

As if I'd let a murderer get within a county of my sister.

**Yeah. And when Sasha screws it up, I'll fix it and rescue you!**

_I think you're both halfwits._

Do you love us?

_Of course._

Then you're more of one than either of us.

**How long're they going to quibble over the hunting grounds? We've been here for hours and I don't see the point.**

You wouldn't, would you? We have to learn to negotiate things like this.

_You mean you do._

Dabert, too, if he means what he says about killing me.

**If I have to learn this before taking over the estate, you can have it.**

I knew you didn't have it in you.

**Besides, the hunting ground are ours. The Marquis challenges us every other year, and every other year we still have the rights to the forest.**

_He's ignoring you._

If we don't listen, that'll change when we're the lords of the estate.

_…you're ignoring me…_

**We? You.**

We. I promised.

**I think you were wrong. She isn't more of a halfwit. You are, thinking it'll work.**

We'll get around the law. You're inheriting half the estate.

_I can't see you getting your hands dirty just so our little brother can play king with you._

**Oi! I'm older than you. And we'll do it, even if Sasha is a halfwit.**

_You're shorter than me. I know, I know. Even if he has to become king for real and you have to fight ten thousand armies._

**We'll take care of you, too. So stop complaining that you'll end up like that man's wives.**

Paranoia doesn't suit you, sister.

_You two are so stupid. First you're killing each other, next you're overthrowing entire realms together._

**Shut up. You're a girl. You don't get it.**

_I understand more than-_

-enough. Right, Nanon? I've got to listen now, even if you two won't.

**He's not fooling anyone.**

_He's still a better brother than you, Dabert._

**Halfwit.**

_You shouldn't call yourself names._


End file.
